New publication on natural resource conflict in Africa

Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde explores struggles over access to water and pastures in Niger

In Niger the question of rights to pastoral resources illustrates how ideologies in Western mindset have been transported to the African continent. On the on hand there has been an attempt to standardize legal frameworks and land tenure practices with uniform rules. On the other hand, since the 1990s customary practices are increasingly recognized in legal frameworks.

In “Struggling for water and pastures in Niger” Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde sw37650.asp explores the philosophical assumptions behind the rules governing rights to water and pastures in the pastoral areas of the Diffa region in Niger. The book shows how these assumptions inform natural resource struggles on the ground and reveals that points of contest between universalism and cultural relativism in regard to property, public authority and justice are reflected in both national legislation and in international development practices. On the basis of a sensitive study of struggles over water and pastures in Diffa, Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde accounts for the outcome of conflict and cooperation and explains why herders, like people in other cultures, conceive of their rights in a contradictory manner: as requiring adoption to cultural specific conditions and yet applies universally to all.

The book is published by VDM Verlag and can be bought at www.amazon.co.uk and is available for lending at the DCISM Library.

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